from the huh? dept

We've written about upstart textbook company Flat World Knowledge a number of times, mostly highlighting its interesting business model of giving away digital versions of its textbooks for free, while then charging for various scarcities, including printed versions. It's also done some interesting things, like creating a make your own textbook platform. However, the company has now announced a surprising about face, saying that it will no longer offer free access to its textbooks.

The company's explanation here rings hollow:

Cost partly motivated the decision, according to Jeff Shelstad, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “We’ve got to be smart with the limited capital that we have” if the company is to survive 10 years from now, he said.

There’s also “an element of fairness” behind the move, Mr. Shelstad said. Some institutional partners have been paying as much as $20 to $25 per student for access to Flat World content, while other partners pay far less. The goal is to even things out while remaining affordable, according to Mr. Shelstad. “We have anchored ourselves around affordability, and we are still there with this move,” he said.

None of those arguments make much sense, frankly. The "costs" associated with offering up free access could be alleviated by putting the works on other platforms like BitTorrent. The "fairness" argument also makes little sense. If everyone chooses to opt-in to whatever level they think makes the most sense for their situation, what's the problem?

And, of course, this move goes 100% against the promise that the company made when it first launched:

Are you reading this feeling a bit jaded? Something must be coming -- some advertising, spam, a charge after a trial period, lock-in to a product, something. Breathe. Relax. It's just not coming.

Our business model eliminates the catch. We're giving away great textbooks and making them open because it solves real problems for students and instructors. In so doing, we are creating a large market for our product. We then turn around and sell things of value to that large market -- more convenient ways to consume our free book (print, audio, PDF) and efficient ways to study (study aids). Sure, we'll make less money per student than the big guys. But that's okay. We'll be selling to a lot more of them, and we'll be doing it for a lot less money (thanks to technology like web-hosted services, XML, print-on-demand, and more). Like we said... just a smarter way to do business. For all of us.

Apparently they didn't mean most of that. Makes it a bit more difficult to trust the company on any future promises. That's not to say that the company might not still be an important player in disrupting traditional textbook pricing, but it seems like it's just opened up opportunities for others to come in and focus on truly open solutions.

In the post-paywall survey, participants read one of two “justification” paragraphs, one emphasizing a profit motive and one emphasizing financial need (that paragraph concluded, “if the NY Times does not implement digital subscriptions, the likelihood that it will go bankrupt seems high”).

Participants then “rated how the information changed their support for the paywall and their willingness to pay.” The results showed that “When participants were provided with a compelling justification for the paywall — that the NYT was likely to go bankrupt without it — their support and willingness to pay increased. In contrast, when participants were provided with a justification that emphasized financial stability, their support and willingness to pay decreased.”

As we've often noted, paywalls may generate a little bit of revenue, or even brief periods of encouraging success, but they are ultimately not a sustainable business model for online news (though financial news may prove to be a rare exception to this rule). A survey like this one is rather emotionally manipulative, but by ending on that dark note of bankruptcy it demonstrates an important point: readers will only consider paying if they think, even temporarily, that they can't get what they want for free. The more the New York Times or any other newspaper retreats into the shadow of the paywall, the more competitors will provide readers with a compelling option. When they see that financial stability and quality content is possible without a paywall (something they already seem aware of, judging by this study's results) they won't be so willing to provide a financial safety net to old institutions encumbered by legacy costs.

Of course, more importantly, even these swing voters who are hooked by the sob story represent only a small portion of the overall study. Its broader results (from the full paper) are even more illustrative:

Only 7 percent planned to buy or had already purchased a digital subscription. Another 12 percent already had a paper subscription that provided online access and 16 percent were unsure of their response. Of the 65 percent who planned not to pay, 59 percent felt very certain of their response.

Results suggest that price and availability of free news sources were barriers to paying. Most participants rated the paywall as expensive (68 percent), though only 18 percent of those who planned not to pay or were unsure said it was “very true” that they could not afford it. Few (6 percent) thought the price was inexpensive, with about a quarter (26 percent) indicating the price was about right. Participants who planned not to pay or were unsure most commonly planned to stay within the free monthly limit (60 percent), switch to other news sources (44 percent), and use loopholes (39 percent).

Now, the New York Times paywall has performed somewhat better than expected, largely because it's not much of a wall at all, but a study like this just enforces the idea that it's a stop-gap solution at best—and a hindrance to smarter strategies at worst.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Parrots are well-known as non-human animals that can speak our language with some degree of intelligence, but there are a few other examples of animals that can perform similar feats. So far, the vocalizations of these animals are a bit difficult to understand, but it's clear that there are some non-human species that want to imitate us. Before anyone else says it... I, for one, welcome our new _____ overlords.

from the this-is-unfortunate dept

So I hear there's some sort of election happening this week (have you heard anything about it?). Earlier this year, we wrote about an awesome effort by the folks at NPR's Planet Money to bring together a group of five different economists, from all over the political spectrum, and see if they could find points that all of them agreed upon. They came up with a list of six things that all of them agreed would be smart ideas for a President to implement -- and what was striking about all six was that not a single one of them was anywhere near politically tenable. Every one of them would be argued down immediately.

Part of the problem, honestly, was that nearly all of them required understanding a) a little bit of economics and b) being willing to understand nuanced situations and how different moves reverberate through the economy. Those, unfortunately, are rather difficult things -- and it was seen in our comments too. We had over 200 comments, and many of them showed exactly that problem. People made broad, sweeping generalizations based on the short one-sentence versions, without understanding the details or the nuances. Also, ridiculously, many people insisted that the plans were all a nefarious plot of one particular side of the political spectrum, totally ignoring the fact that the economists came from all sides. The idea that, for example, anyone might consider economists Dean Baker or Bob Frank "right wing" is so hilarious as to defy comment.

Since then, Planet Money continued the series with some really interesting followups. First they discussed some of the ideas that the economists couldn't agree on (free heroin!). Then it got fun. They brought in some political spin-meisters to take the policy planks that everyone admitted would never get very far coming out of a real politician's mouth and see if they could spin them positively. It's a really enjoyable/scary episode, in which complex economic ideas are reduced to crowd pleasing soundbites, mostly focused on misdirecting people from reality and, well, accentuating the positive.

Finally, last week, they decided to focus group the ideas and proved what we already knew: that the ideas, when explained to everyday Americans, were immediately and sometimes caustically shot down as being horrible, horrible ideas. They then tried to take some of the spin-meister versions, and present them as commercials... and got a little budge from a few people, but that was about it. In the end, it was clear that these ideas -- no matter how good they might be -- would immediately be shot down by the public, meaning that any candidate who proposed them wouldn't have much luck.

That's somewhat depressing, but a sign of the world we live in today. I'd argue that a big part of the problem is that nearly all of the proposals involve what appears to be short-term pain for long-term benefit -- and we live in such a short-term focused society. But as someone who tends to think that we really need much more understanding of economics and its impact among the general populace, this kind of thing only confirms how weak our economics education is today.

from the interesting... dept

Back in 2006, we wrote about George Lucas claiming that the $200 million feature film was dead and that he was going to focus on making much cheaper videos for TV or online. That's not entirely what's happened in the interim, but it appears that he may be more serious about focusing on such things now that he's handed over Lucasfilm to Disney. In an interview about what he's working on next, he said that he's still going to make films, but he doesn't expect that they'll be for theater viewing:

His last film was this year's "Red Tails," which told the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, a legendary black flight unit formed in 1941 that debunked widely held beliefs that black pilots were incapable of fighting in combat. While he described that film as a labor of love, he said, "I'm going to go further out than that. I barely got 'Red Tails' into the theaters. The ones I'm working on now will never get into the theaters."

That could mean a lot of different things, but it would be cool to see someone like Lucas really embrace the internet...

from the a-step-up dept

For years, we've criticized Twitter's DMCA policy, in which it completely disappears tweets that are subject to DMCA takedown notices it receives. The company, as part of its transparency campaign, has now changed its policy slightly, such that it will now replace the taken down tweet with one that indicates the tweet was removed due to a DMCA notice. While security researcher Mikko Hypponen has a tweet showing the text that Twitter is replacing tweets with, it quickly became clear that his tweet was a "joke" to show that it's easy to simply copy the general text that Twitter will be using:

This Tweet from @username has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder. Learn more.

The "replaced" tweets now link to this page with an explanation of Twitter's new DMCA policy. While that policy notes, thankfully, that it also sends all DMCA notices to Chilling Effects, it would be even cooler if the tweets in question linked to the Chilling Effects entry with the DMCA notice in question, so people could understand who removed the tweet and why. There may be some issues with the timing on that, but right now it leaves open a lot of questions about why certain tweets were removed. And, given that it's somewhat easy to "fake" the new tweets (even though faked ones won't have the "learn more" phrase linked), I wonder if these will have the same impact.

from the going-dark dept

The FBI has been pushing to get more powers to wiretap newer digital forms of communication -- some of which are supposed to be encrypted end-to-end -- for quite some time. It's been working with various companies to try to get backdoors, while also pushing for legislation to compel companies to comply. It is known that the FBI has a program called "Going Dark" to tap digital communications. The EFF sought information on Going Dark with a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, which generally turned up heavily redacted documents that revealed very little. In response, the EFF went to court... and the court has now said that the feds need to reveal more. First, the court said that the government appeared to go overboard in leaving out info:

the Government is directed to conduct a further
review of the materials previously withheld as non-responsive. In conducting such review, the
presumption should be that information located on the same page, or in close proximity to undisputedly responsive material is likely to qualify as information that in “any sense sheds light on,
amplifies, or enlarges upon” the plainly responsive material, and that it should therefore be
produced, absent an applicable exemption.

Separately, the court said that the index of info provided has problems, not necessarily in the index itself, but the way it's presented seems purposely designed to stifle the EFF's efforts to understand the exemptions by overloading the info, without clearly highlighting what applies to what:

As plaintiff points out, however, the large number
of different types of documents included in each summary entry in the index, and the fact that
multiple exemptions are claimed, makes analysis difficult, despite the veneer of detail. The
supporting declaration covers 171 pages (with a great deal of repetition) purportedly explaining the
justification for all of the exemptions claims, but does not identify documents by bates numbers or
otherwise, further exacerbating the problem.

As such, the court has ordered the feds to try again:

the existing index is insufficient to provide an adequate foundation for review of the soundness of
the exemption claims. Accordingly, the FBI is directed to provide a revised index as promptly as
practical, making a good faith effort to address the issues raised by EFF.

This is the "most transparent administration in history"? Withholding excess info and making sure the info sent over is as tough as possible to review?

from the power-corrupts? dept

Over the weekend, I saw an article on Salon about how shameful it is that supporters of President Obama, who were loud in their condemnation of attacks on civil liberties by George W. Bush, seemed to ignore that President Obama has been worse in many ways (despite many public promises to the contrary). We've already noted that the Democratic Party -- which had fixing civil liberties abuses in its 2008 platform -- has removed all traces of that from the new platform. You would think that, for those who believe strongly in civil liberties, this would be a major concern. Rather than fix them, President Obama continued or expanded many of the very questionable policies of his predecessor, and then added a number of terrifying new ones.

Of course, if civil liberties is the issue you vote over, the other major party offers you no help either (as you should already know, based on Bush's presidency). As Adam Serwer notes, when debating issues of civil liberties, there really is no significant choice between Obama and Romney on this particular issue. There may be some differences at the margins, but that's about it.

Serwer's piece argues that much of this is driven by the American public, who seem particularly fond of giving up our own civil liberties in the face of non-stop fear mongering about terrorism. It seems likely that there is also something to the fact that, once in power, people generally don't like to scale back their own ability to "do stuff." Either way, it amazes me that avid supporters of one side or the other, who absolutely hate the idea of the "other side" getting into power, never seem concerned about how the other side will make use of the same policies they put in place to support themselves.

There are, of course, real differences in many of the other policies from the two candidates, but the lack of significant differences on civil liberties is a real shame. We should demand better.

A license for €15 for the whole event isn't going to ruin any graduation party.

Nor will SOZA not getting €15 for some high school kids having a graduation party ruin its operations. Thankfully, the Slovakian Ministry of Culture pointed out how ridiculous this was:

The Ministry of Culture appealed to SOZA, insisting that student graduation parties were for parents and teachers and could not be considered public events - hence, there was no reason for SOZA to introduce a fee for them.

Recognizing that even the government was against it on this one, SOZA backed down, while still petulantly insisting that legally it had done nothing wrong.

What's interesting here, however, is that it's yet another misstep by a copyright organization that's leading to even less respect for copyright, and increasing pressure to change copyright laws to avoid this kind of ridiculousness. Global Voices (link above) lists out a few examples of people speaking up and becoming activists over this issue:

Martin Královic thought [sk] it would be a good idea to register Christmas of 2012, his 50th birthday celebration (in 2038) and his own funeral with SOZA.

Martin Huba asked [sk] about the whereabouts of the money paid by clubs where he gave concerts with his band: as an author, he has been filling SOZA forms, providing an address to which this money should have been sent.

Badatel.sk thought [sk] that strict application of the laws was the best way to deal with SOZA. Using the Ministry of Culture's graduation party statement as a precedent, restaurants paying to SOZA for public music could declare themselves private clubs (with low entrance fees, though). Concert organizers and others could do the same.

In the end, this resulted in a rally at the Ministry of Culture, with them asking the government to cancel SOZA's collection license.

What amazes me is that the people at these organizations are so myopic that they don't realize the backlash to these kinds of actions. They're doing more harm to their position than good. Whenever we see stories like this, it just makes people think less and less of copyright.

from the that'll-teach-them dept

For all their talk about piracy and yearly losses measured in billions, the big movie studios sure do seem to enjoy smacking their paying customers around with anti-piracy warnings and ads. Consider the poor sucker who actually went out and paid cash money for the latest shiny disc and now has to watch a multitude of eagle-laden logos and horrible analogies parade unskippably across his or her screen before finally being allowed to watch the unskippable trailers before finally being allowed to watch 15 seconds of unskippable animation before they can actually watch the movie they're now regretting having shelled out actual retail price for.

Now, 20th Century Fox has found a new way to pack up paying viewers for another guilt trip, all expenses paid (by the viewer.) If the viewers failed to pick up on any of the front-loaded anti-piracy "education," they're now being graced with a reminder of the "true cost of piracy" right as they exit the theater.

It's hard for Hollywood to explain to consumers about the losses to the movie industry caused by piracy. Especially when talking heads like studio moguls and government officials try and fail. So kudos to Ted Gagliano, president of 20th Century Fox feature post-production, who began putting end cards on the studio's movies like this one.

This bit of information could conceivably deter a few people from rushing right home and onto the internetz for the "home version." When they see that many people worked many hours, the few not shouting "Citation, needed!" will sleep the sleep of angels, knowing their full retail price ticket purchases will keep the grocery bagger off the street at least one day longer. Their sleep will be even more angelic when they realize who's behind this new idea.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Chairman/CEO Jim Gianopulos tells me that the end card anti-piracy project was suggested by the Obama administration. "It was actually an idea of Vice President Biden's when we visited him during a MPAA Board meeting earlier this year. We thought it was an excellent suggestion and adopted the idea and will continue for all movies going forward."

Yes. An elected official in the second most powerful position in the world took time out of his busy schedule to help out some buddies of his who looked like they could use a hand: the always-right-on-death's-doorstep movie industry. And the fact that Joe Biden sits in on MPAA board meetings should concern no one in the slightest, especially when it comes time to discuss things that affect the movie industry -- like free trade agreements that value draconian IP protection over all else.

There's not much real estate left for anti-piracy infotainment. The front end has had it for years. This takes care of the back. Maybe they'll start popping up factoids and warnings at the bottom of the screen during the actual running time, making the movie-going experience indistinguishable from a night in front of broadcast television. Or maybe they're just waiting for the President himself to suggest that one. Perhaps at the next MPAA board meeting.

from the and-you-say-you'll-be-able-to-do-this-for-70-years-after-you're-dead? dept

Oh, look. Yet another person has made the assumption that the "c" in "copyright" stands for "censorship." We've seen this before. Several times. Just in the past six months, we've seen these attempts (sometimes successful) to wield copyright as a weapon:

- Actress Cindy Garcia tries to have "Innocence of Muslims" film removed from Youtube by claiming she owns the copyright to her performance in the film.

- Human Synergistics International gets a 2-year-old blog post removed for quoting four sentences from its "exclusive" trapped-in-a-desert team building exercise.

Craig also tried to get the three posts about him on Popehat taken down by sending a bogus DMCA takedown notice to our host, Dreamhost. I've been a little mad at Dreamhost recently because of some outages, but I'm very happy with their response to this, which gives me confidence they will handle it correctly. They've recognized that's the notice is defective and they're not requiring a counter-notice from me yet — though I'd enjoy writing one.

It's refreshing to see a hosting company dismiss a baseless claim out of hand, unfortunately one of the rarer sights on the internet. Ken, who wrote all the posts in question, has posted the DMCA notice at Popehat, noting that Brittain clearly doesn't know, or doesn't care, what copyright actually covers.

The notice is patently ridiculous on any number of levels. Note, for instance, that Mr. Brittain is asserting copyright in a printout of his criminal record and in a correspondence between "David Blade" and Marc Randazza.

He also notes that Brittain takes care not to make any assertions that "David Blade" is an actual person (although he seems more than willing to protect Blade's "copyright" for him). Then there's this paragraph, which starts out in the general area of copyright before wandering all over the place:

Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled: The posts and images above contain personal information which is owned and copyrighted by its respective copyright owners and is damaging in nature and contains personal information in violation of copyright and numerous privacy laws and must be removed immediately.

Sure, some of the stuff on the list might be "damaging in nature," but it's all self-inflicted. Here's what Brittain wants removed:

An ad from his own website isn't "personal," and if it's "damaging," it's Brittain's own fault. The communication between nonexistent "lawyer" David Blade III and Marc Randazza may be both "personal" and "damaging," and while whoever actually wrote "Blade's" side may have a weak copyright claim in his portion of the discussion, there's obviously an incredibly strong fair use claim in republishing the entire correspondence. The felony record could be considered "damaging," but it's a matter of public record, removing it from the "personal" column -- and there's certainly no copyright claim there. And the photo? It's a screenshot of Chance Trahan's public tweets! How the hell does that violate anything?

Craig/David/Chance, the unholy trinity that is actually (most likely) a duo (at best), is attempting to undo the damage done, not by apologizing, taking down the site or just simply shutting up. Instead, Brittain thinks the internet can be controlled by abusing existing IP laws. And even if this particular gambit had worked, it still wouldn't have worked.

Even if you catch some abuse official on a bad day and convince them to take a few posts down, 100 more will pop up talking about your sick campaign of fraud and extortion.

Of all the things copyright is supposed to be used for, trying to erase your dodgy internet history isn't one of them. A weapon that has the potential to outlive you for seventy years is entirely too much power to be placing in the hands of those willing to abuse it. As we've noted before, the "perjury" aspect of bogus takedowns simply isn't enough of a threat to keep DMCA notices safely holstered.

Craig Brittain may have felt he could censor his way back into "respectability," but he's apparently just going to keep underestimating his critics. This is going to end badly, but not anytime soon, it appears. As disheartening as it is to see the abuse of intellectual property in the pursuit of shutting critics up, it's nice to see these clumsy attempted bludgeonings working less and less frequently.

from the details,-details dept

Given the still ongoing recovery from Hurricane Sandy in the northeast, New Jersey has decided to deal with potential problems with Tuesday's election by declaring that "displaced" voters can qualify to submit ballots the same way overseas members of the armed services can -- via email or fax, followed up with a hardcopy. They're also allowing early voting, more provisional voting and absentee voting, but the ability to submit by email is generating plenty of attention. Some, like professor Richard Hasen, who is an "election law" expert, worries about the security of such a system, and whether or not ballots could get hacked or lost. Professor Andrew Appel, who has done work with e-voting systems in the past, worries about two things. First, the loss of the secret ballot when you vote this way:

We see already one problem: The loss of the secret ballot. At many times in the 20th century, NJ political machines put such intense pressure on voters that the secret ballot was an important protection. In 2012 it’s in the news that some corporations are pressuring their employees to vote in certain ways. The secret ballot is still critical to the functioning of democracy.

But, he's also worried about the unclear nature of the announcement (pdf), in which it is not emphasized that anyone who votes this way must also submit a hardcopy. He notes that the directive about allowing displaced voters to vote this way left out the line about submitting the hardcopy, and the law is not clear what happens to votes where the hardcopy is not sent as well. The fear then, is that these votes will wind up in court.

Then things really get murky: The statute doesn’t say what happens if the hardcopy is not received, except that the county superintendent of elections must investigate. It’s not difficult to imagine that these ballots will end up in court.

I urge the Lieutenant Governor to issue a revised order, clarifying that displaced voters must immediately follow up by mailing hardcopy identical to their e-mailed ballot–or risk having their votes thrown out.

It does sound like officials in New Jersey now understand this and intend to be much clearer about it, but it is raising reasonable concerns.

I am in no way a fan of online voting. Just last week I hosted an online symposium where experts talked about the many barriers to secure online voting. But under these circumstances I can understand why the State has taken the steps it has. The email+hardcopy approach will undermine ballot secrecy, and inevitably some voters will forfeit their votes by failing to submit the follow-on hardcopy ballot correctly. But at the same time, the state is allowing citizens who are facing a tough situation a greater chance to cast their votes. I would strongly oppose any long-term move toward online voting, but I can see the point of allowing limited email+hardcopy voting for displaced voters under these very unusual circumstances.

If the voting in New Jersey turns out weird tomorrow, the conspiracy theories are never going to stop...

from the but-of-course dept

Apparently Apple didn't need two weeks to put up a new "apology" statement on its UK website after the first obnoxious one was deemed not good enough by the UK courts. As you may recall, Apple was told by the court that it had to tell the world that Samsung didn't copy Apple's design on some of its devices, after a judge ruled that Apple's devices were simply much cooler.

Apple has now put up its new statement and linked to it from its UK home page in a large font. The full statement is a lot shorter and doesn't include anything about how "cool" Apple's products are or the other court cases around the world. It has also admitted that the first statement was "inaccurate and did not comply" with the original court order:

Of course, it appears that Apple couldn't resist an attempt to continue to be slightly petulant in doing this, though it did so in a way that it hoped the judge wouldn't notice, by hiding it in the javascript. However, as the eagle eyes at Hacker News and Reddit quickly pointed out, Apple had added a bit of javascript to make sure that, no matter how big you enlarged the browser window, the link to the apology and the statement about it were below the fold. That is, there is no way to view that statement without first having to scroll down on the Apple page.

To be honest, I find it a little silly that the judge is requiring this statement at all. It seems to be going beyond what's reasonable already (and it seems wrong to require Apple to put a statement on its own website). Anyone who really cares about this stuff will see the news. That said, I find Apple's response to this ridiculous and that much more perplexing. Each attempt to somehow not fully comply with the judge's demand just calls that much more attention to the situation and the fact that Apple lost and Samsung didn't copy it. If Apple had just complied normally, this story would already be over.

from the freedom-isn't-free dept

We talk a lot about the importance of free speech here in the US, and worry tremendously about any efforts to chip away at such free speech rights. Even as we worry about how free speech issues are dealt with at home, we're very aware that most other countries have significantly less respect for basic free expression concepts. It's somewhat horrifying to learn that last week, a court in Vietnam sentenced two Vietnamese musicians to years in prison for writing, recording and posting online some "protest" songs:

Both were accused of posting songs on a Web site of Patriotic Youth, a opposition group based overseas. Mr. Tri, 34, who uses the stage name Viet Khang, has criticized the government in his songs for not taking a harder line against China in territorial disputes. A video for his song, "Viet Nam Toi Dau" ("Where Is My Vietnam?"), has become a YouTube hit, with 700,000 views. Mr. Binh, 37, recorded the song "Courage in the Prison" ("Nguc Toi Hien Ngang") in support of an imprisoned blogger, Nguyen Van Hai. The song urges people to mount nonviolent protests.

And we're not just talking about a few weeks in prison, either. Tri got four years and Binh got six years. Binh's situation is especially ridiculous since his song is about an equally ridiculous prison sentence for a blogger. Basic political dissent is important to any free society, and to completely lock people up over some rather straightforward protest songs (that don't advocate violence or anything like that) is really quite horrifying. The US, thankfully, has condemned these sentences, but this is an issue that more people need to know about and speak out about.